Dax Harwood looks back on FTR's WWE release.
Harwood and Wheeler started teaming up together in WWE in 2014. They were already friends before they came to the company, and they gradually rose to the top in NXT. Initially known as The Mechanics and later renamed The Revival, the duo continued to thrive. They won the NXT Tag Team Championship and Raw Tag Team Championship twice apiece. Wheeler and Harwood also won the SmackDown Tag Team Championship, making them the first Tag Team Triple Crown winners in WWE history.
Despite this success, the duo dealt with questionable booking throughout their time with WWE. In 2019, as part of their feud with The Usos, Jimmy and Jey humiliated them several times on WWE TV. Most notably, The Usos caught Wheeler shaving Harwood's back. FTR reportedly asked for their release in 2019, but they weren't granted it until April 2020. Shortly after their departure, they noted that they wanted to leave the company because tag team wrestling wasn't treated with respect in WWE, among other factors.
Speaking with Fightful's Sean Ross Sapp at WrestleCade, Harwood looked back on the end of the duo's time in WWE and noted that passion for the business can be their downfall sometimes. He recalled the fateful night in January 2019 when they decided they were going to ask for their release. Harwood emphasized that they knew they could do better, and they were confident that tag team wrestling could be presented in a more satisfying way elsewhere.
"Again, that’s my downfall, our downfall. So yeah we went into the building that night with the idea that we were gonna ask for our release. We had our match. We asked for Hunter and Vince all day, and they were very busy, which is typical of a TV day, so I’m not upset at all. But we had our match with Lucha House Party, we came back to the back, dripping sweat, and we said, ‘Hunter, we need to talk to you now.’ He’s said, ‘Can you give me five minutes?’ We said, ‘Absolutely.’ He came in the back. This is gonna sound very egotistical, I don’t mean for it to. But we knew that we could do better than what we were doing, and we knew tag team wrestling could be presented better than it was being presented. If we were gonna stay there, we would have been stuck in a rut, in that previous regime. We should have been stuck in a rut and never amounted to anything. Now we’ve been able to go out, and we’ve been able to make a name for ourselves," Harwood said.
Harwood also made it clear that he doesn't harbor any ill feelings towards former WWE Chairman Vince McMahon because he has the right to his opinion. He stated that, to him, it's okay if McMahon doesn't like tag team wrestling, as it was his company at the end of the day.
"I can’t be mad at Vince, you know what I’m saying? Just like I said, if he doesn’t like tag team wrestling, that’s okay. One, it’s his company, but two, that’s okay. It’s his opinion to not like it. If he doesn’t like specifically me and Cash, that’s okay, too. It just sucks that he was the only billionaire boss at the time that was paying us that much money. But that’s totally okay, and I harbor no ill feelings towards him or towards the company or anything like that," Harwood said.
Harwood and Wheeler signed with AEW and debuted in May 2020. Since then, they have continued to reach new heights. They won the AEW World Tag Team Championship at AEW All Out 2020. Over the past year or so, the duo have won the tag titles in AAA, ROH, and NJPW, and they currently hold the three sets of championships at the same time.
In the same interview, Harwood stated that he and Wheeler have talked about potentially taking a year away from TV wrestling. Check out his comments here.
Harwood also noted that all Bryan Danielson does is talk about penis sizes in the locker room. Click here to see what he had to say.
On the November 30 episode of AEW Dynamite, Harwood faced Bryan Danielson in a singles match. Catch up on our coverage of the show here.
